This invention relates generally to a user interface of a data processing system. More particularly, the invention concerns displaying dynamic data in the form of a notebook.
It is well known to provide a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to allow user to control computer system and to present their results of system operations on the display. In a graphical user interface, applications and data files are generally represented by a plurality of graphical objects such as windows or icons. When there is a large amount of data, particularly dynamic data such as status information which constantly changes, it is difficult to present all of the data simultaneously on the display. For this reason, the data may have to be displayed on many windows sequentially. For example, in the design and operation of computer networks, it is known to segment networks for various reasons and to present network information based on this segmentation. Devices or "nodes" on a network may be assigned to groups, or "clusters", according to traffic patterns so that the nodes within a cluster communicate more directly with each other than with other nodes. Nodes may also be assigned to groups according to differences in the transmission media between nodes, the location of the nodes or for security purposes. For manageability and readability, the group size should not grow too large. Thus, it is likely in large networks to have a large number of groups associated with dynamic data such as status information which must be accessible to the user by means of graphical user interface.
It is known to change the appearance of a symbol on a computer display to alert a user to the status of the system when a certain condition occurs. The volume or rate of network transactions among a group of nodes may be monitored in this manner. When the volume or rate of transactions within a cluster exceeds a preset limit, a symbol representing that group will alert the user to investigate the condition. However, this approach allows only a limited amount of information to be conveyed to the user to help in an investigation of the system. For example, with the usual system when a symbol announces that the volume of transactions has exceeded a limit within a cluster, the user must take steps to get more data about that cluster. Usually, this involves selecting the symbol that represents the cluster demanding attention and changing the computer display to show details. Navigation through several windows may be required. With large amounts of data, all the symbols can not be displayed simultaneously so the user may not be alerted.
the need to provide a manageable GUI for large amounts of dynamic data such as network status information is increasing. There is a trend toward larger, more complex networks because of distributed processing and parallel processing. Also, since individual network devices are becoming more powerful and less expensive, users tend to add to and reconfigure networks more frequently. Under these circumstances, it is more important, but harder to monitor the status of computer networks.
Other examples where a large amount dynamic data may be presented in a graphical user interface include stock commodity prices which change constantly to the market fluctuations and scientific monitoring of a experiment in process, for example, a space shuttle launch.
A notebook is a graphical control which has been incorporated in IBM's OS/2 Operating System which allows a substantial amount of information to be represented concisely in the GUI. A notebook is typically presented as a set of windows in which only the top window is visible. A series of tabs extend out from the other panel pages. However, a notebook does not typically present dynamic data, but static data. Further, the notebook has a number of limitations which make it difficult to monitor dynamic data such as network status. In today's notebook, an invariant set of data is associated with each page. There is no means to present data sets which are constantly reconfigured. Even if a notebook were adapted to display dynamic data, unless the user is looking at a particular page in which the status information is presented in the top page, there is no means of alerting the user that a change in state has occurred. Changes in state in the groups associated with the hidden pages are not visible.
There is occasionally a need to compare different groups of dynamic data. Logically, each page of the notebook would represent a group of the data. With a notebook, only a single page is visible at a time. Thus, when comparing different groups, the single page of the notebook is not informative enough. The user is forced to tab back and forth between the two pages. The designer might be prompted to put more information onto a page which will reduce the total number of pages, however, this defeats the original purpose of using a notebook, which is to classify data into groups and to present each group in a page. While these problems are to an extent shared with notebooks presenting static data, they are exacerbated when dynamic information is presented as the user cannot depend on the data which was presented on first page remaining constant at a later time when a second page is viewed.
The current construction of notebook dynamic link libraries (DLLs) are not designed to provide support for dynamic information. Nor are they designed for viewing more than a single page at a time. Once the developer has written the notebook DLL, it will not support regrouping of the data in the notebook as may be required for certain applications.